The Artist and the Shapeshifters
by SarianaJ
Summary: Natalie Becket is just a normal student, an aspiring artist. That is, until she realizes that the creatures she draws are like the people in her usual drawing spot, which pulls Natalie into an adventure which just happens to coincide with the Doctor's.
1. Chapter 1

Natalie Becket spent all of her free time in the ruins, if anyone wanted to find her, that's where they'd look. They would always find her with her sketchpad on her knee and her box of pencils beside her. Sometimes the subject of her art would be sitting in front of her, like a fox from the surrounding woodland that was standing on the wall, or the local robins that build their nest in one of the crevices in the old ruins, but Natalie often drew from memory too.

She would sit for hours in the ruins, trying to get the colours perfectly right as she listened to the birdsong around her, enjoying the peace and quiet away from her university. Her art degree was going well, but she always preferred to draw outside the classroom, to be surrounded by the creatures she was drawing rather than using a pixelated image in the classroom.

It was on a random Thursday, like all of the others, when she bumped into a man on the way to the ruins.

"Oh, sorry about that" he said to her before he continued on the path towards town. Natalie watched him go, confused by the sight if the young man that looked so familiar for some reason, but she was sure she'd never seen him before.

She pushed the thoughts from her mind and continued walking to the ruins, but the thoughts returned when she found a group of familiar faces sitting in the ruins. They were a small family that Natalie was sure she knew, but she didn't know where from.

She shrugged and took her usual seat on the wall, opening her sketchpad and her box of pencils. One of the young boys climbed on the wall and looked at her drawings over her shoulder as she flicked through them.

She turned to face him and he scampered away like a spooked animal, making her frown. Her frown deepened as she got to her drawing from two days ago, her jaw dropping a she realised why she recognised the man earlier and the family.

"No way" she muttered, looking up at the family and then back to the sketchpad.

"You're correct" a voice echoed from behind her, making Natalie jump before she slowly turned to face it's source

"Your current theory, that the foxes in your drawing and the family who have just been here are one and the same is correct" the voice explained. It belonged to the young man from earlier.

"The father fox" Natalie whispered to herself, picking up her pencils and slowly getting to her feet. The young man nodded, his auburn ears sticking out above his medium length hair of the same colour. As Natalie slowly backed away she could just make out his tail behind him, the chunk of fur missing from it proof of what he was telling her.

Natalie shrieked as she backed into another young man, who pulled the pencils and sketchbook out of her hand. She looked up at him as she tried to take them back, only to back away as she saw his rows of sharp teeth he revealed as she attempted to reclaim her possessions.

"I wouldn't try that if I were you, Rob still hasn't mastered the transition yet so it could get very ugly" the young man with fox ears said, right next to her ear. Before she could scream his hand was clamped over her mouth.

"Don't worry Natalie, you're just going to sleep for a bit, that's all" he told her. She tried to free herself for a few moments before her world went black and she was released.

"Where on earth are these shapshifters hiding?" the Doctor grumbled as he hovered in Earth's orbit. A beep caught his attention and he looked up the ceiling.

"Yes, that pun was on purpose, now can you help me find them please? Preferably before they start killing" he told it. His comment was followed by a whirring noise which was quickly replaced by a nice 'ding'.

"Thank you" he said as he pulled the screen towards him. With one quick look at the screen, the Doctor started to flip levers.

"I'll land you a safe distance away, then go in and fix their ship, then come back again. I just hope they haven't started killing already" the Doctor told the TARDIS as it landed with a thump inside the ruins of the old castle.

The Doctor grabbed his jacket and ran out the door, stepping directly into the teleporter as it activated, taking him straight onto the shapeshifters' buried spaceship.

"Well that worked" he murmured as he started scanning the walls around him. He listened to the sonic screwdriver give him the result before he ducked into the shadows, just in time for a shapshifter to walk past carrying a young woman. The Doctor waited until the shapeshifter's fox tail had disappeared through the doorway before he ran for the nearby door.

"Oh, aren't you a beauty" he mumbled, looking up at the blue engine shining twenty feet above him. The Doctor looked around the room quickly and, making sure he was alone, he climbed the ladder towards the engine to get to work.

Natalie awoke in a small bed surrounded by silver. She blinked to take on the small metal room properly, her pencils and sketchbook was sat at the bottom of the bed and a fox cub was curled up on them.

Her head dropped back onto the thin pillow as her most recent memories returned and she had to resist the urge to jump out of the bed as she realised where she was. The fox cub looked to her for a moment and, registering that she was now awake, hopped off the bed and slid through a small door that was invisible to Natalie, leaving her alone in the small metal room.

"How the hell did I manage to get myself into this mess?" she asked herself, gazing up at the ceiling of her metal prison and trying to figure everything out.

The Doctor emerged from the shadows again once the small fox had walked past. He snuck back to the teleport and activated it, dropping him directly inside the TARDIS. He ran over to the control panel and grabbed the newspaper clippings sat behind the screen, flipping through them quickly.

"Artist, she was an artist, oh come on where is it? I was only reading it this morning- aha!" The Doctor dropped the rest of the clippings on the floor by the seat and sank into it as he reread the article.

"Oh dear" he muttered a few minutes later. There was an odd whirring noise from above and he looked to the ceiling as he got to his feet.

"Sorry, can't talk now, if I don't get to her soon she'll be the first death!" he shouted up to it as he sprinted to the door.

Natalie jumped as she heard a strangely metallic hiss, scanning the room quickly before she discovered the source of it, a door appearing in the metal wall.

"Finally, you're awake" the shapeshifter said as he walked through the door. Natalie looked up to him with a scowl and he chuckled.

"Of course you knew I was awake, your little spy disappeared a while ago" she retorted, pulling herself into a sitting position and leaning against the wall. The shapeshifter walked further into the room, revealing his fox tail with the missing chunk of fur.

"Why do you say that with such disgust? We've done no harm to you" he asked.

"No, you just robbed me of air until I was unconscious and then took me to your little ship and left me in a room with no door" Natalie replied sarcastically, causing the fox-man to raise an eyebrow.

"Now now, there's no need to be so harsh Natalie, we were only doing what we need to protect ourselves. We couldn't have you telling the world we were here" he explained, leaning against the metallic wall with a small frown. Natalie was too busy watching the door closing, wondering if she could make a run for it.

"I wouldn't try to run if I were you, even if I didn't manage to stop you, you'd be caught by one of the many shapeshifters on this ship" the shapeshifter told her and Natalie turned to him.

"Stay out of my head!" she snapped. "How do you know my name anyway? I don't know yours" The shapeshifter chuckled before he answered.

"We know your name because we see you every day, as for my name, it's Rin" the shapeshifter answered. Both Rin and Natalie looked to the wall as the door appeared and slid open once again.

Natalie looked quickly to Rin before she jumped off the bed and bolted for the opening door, sliding through the small gap and into the corridor.

"Stop her!" Rin shouted into the corridor as he tried to take chase. Natalie just kept running through the maze of tunnels, avoiding the grasp of the other shapeshifters in the corridors, Rin's commands echoing behind her.

Two shapeshifters with wolf ears stepped out of the elevator in front of her and she turned to run into the adjoining corridor, only to be faced by two more shapeshifters. Natalie spun around in a panic, but found herself boxed in.

"I told you not to run" Rin mocked as he caught up with the group. Natalie tried to turn to him, but he moved forward and grabbed her arms, pinning them behind her back.

"I don't think so" he whispered in her ear. He turned to address the group next. "Looks like we have to speed up the plan, get the procedure room ready"

The two other fox-men and the two with wolf ears nodded to Rin and disappeared down in the elevator while the rest of the crowd dispersed as Natalie began to panic.

"W-wait, what procedure?" Natalie couldn't keep her voice steady as she asked her question, so it wavered with her fear. Rin chuckled and pushed her towards her room.

"Just a bit of DNA manipulation, nothing much, enough to turn you into one of us without destroying you completely" he answered. Natalie kept her feet on the floor in an attempt to move no further, but Rin continued to push her along the corridor.

An oval appeared in the wall and Rin pushed her into her room, Natalie turned to see his grin as the gap closed, sealing her in. Natalie pulled her knees to her chest and let her head drop onto them, her unchecked tears dropping onto her knee.

* * *

**A/N**

**Okay, this is yet another of my OC stories. An 11th Doctor one, not that you know that yet because the bowtie is mentioned it the next chapter.**

**Disclaimer: I own Natalie and Rin, everyone else belongs to the BBC.**


	2. Chapter 2

Natalie didn't know how long she'd been sat there before the door opened. She looked up at the opening door as she scrambled as far away from it as she could, expecting Rin and his friends to walk through it, so she was surprised when a tall man wearing a tweed jacket and bowtie became visible.

"Ah, there you are" he said as he spotted her on the floor by the bed. He held a hand out to her and she grabbed it, at which point she was pulled to her feet by the strange man.

"Listen to me Natalie, I'm the Doctor and you need to come with me before the shapeshifters get back" the Doctor told her. she frowned at him for a moment, but at the mention of the shapeshifters her eyes filled with fear. Natalie just nodded, releasing the Doctor's hand to grab her pencils and sketchpad that had been lying on the bed, before following him out of the small room.

"Doctor who?" Natalie asked as he tried to shut the door again. He turned to her with a smirk.

"Just The Doctor" he answered before he turned back to the door.

"Oh come on sonic, this isn't too primitive, just close it" the Doctor grumbled. The door to Natalie's prison closed and the Doctor turned to the artist with a triumphant grin.

"Right then, let's get you out of here" he told her. Natalie nodded and followed him down the corridor, running into him when he suddenly stopped.

"Who are you?" Rin asked the Doctor. Natalie hid in the shadows of the nearest pillar, staying out of the shapeshifter's sight, leaving the Doctor standing in the middle of the corridor.

"I'm here to fix your ship, I was just on my way out" he answered, turning warily as a few more shapeshifters walked up behind him. One of them pulled Natalie out of the shadows and started to drag her away.

The Doctor glanced between Rin's rather creepy grin and Natalie, making a quick decision. There was a short buzz from the sonic and the lights went out, in the confusion of which the Doctor pulled Natalie away from the shapeshifters and towards the teleport.

In an instant, they went from complete darkness to the bright light of the red sunset just visible through the ruins. Natalie shivered and blinked against the bright sunlight. By the time the Doctor had adjusted he couldn't warn Natalie, so their hands were ripped apart as Rin grabbed her. The shapeshifter moved faster than the Doctor could, injecting the contents of a small vial into Natalie's arm, causing the sketchbook and pencils to clatter to the flagstones as it rendered her unconscious. The Doctor managed to catch her before she fully hit the ground at Rin's feet.

"What did you do to her?" the Doctor hissed, looking up at the shapeshifter. Rin chuckled and lifted Natalie off the ground, leaving the Doctor kneeling by thin air.

"I've started the transformation process, now she has to turn, then she will accompany us to our home" Rin answered with a smirk as he was teleported back onto his ship. The Doctor used the sonic screwdriver to reactivate the teleport and he ran down the corridor towards the white room he'd walked past earlier, which was obviously the procedure room.

The Doctor peered around the open door to see Natalie strapped to a white chair, a long needle with a tube attached currently stuck into the back of her hand. He could see liquid moving through the tube, into Natalie, the Doctor guessed it was the stabilising agent to make sure the shapeshifter DNA didn't kill her.

The Doctor followed the path of the tube back to the machine, which he aimed the sonic screwdriver at, stopping it dead. While the shapeshifters tended to the halted machine, the Doctor snuck into the room and pulled the needle out of Natalie's hand before setting to work on the straps holding her in the chair.

By the time the machine was working again, the Doctor was lowering Natalie onto the seat in the TARDIS control room. The Doctor set the TARDIS the task of scanning the artist before he ran back out, locking the door behind him before swiftly unlocking it to run back in with the forgotten sketchbook and pencils.

Satisfied that the TARDIS was following instructions, he ran back out and into the teleporter, instantly taking him back to the shapeshifter's ship where he was surrounded. He lifted the sonic screwdriver above his head and connected it to the ship's engine, causing the light to turn red. The shapeshifters around him fell silent as they saw the red light.

"I can control the engine remotely and tell it to take you home because I was the one that fixed it, yes" the Doctor paused as Rin looked like he was about to speak, but the shapeshifter stayed silent and the Doctor continued. "Or I can destroy the engine, which would in turn destroy this ship and kill all of you. It's your choice"

"I didn't think you would kill in cold blood, not with the amount of blood already on your hands Doctor"

"There isn't actually that much blood on my hands, and I don't see why you should be the ones to change that. However, you are definitely going home, and if you cross me on the way I will blow the engine to pieces" As if to prove a point, the ship shuddered into life.

"Now I'm going to get you in the air and go back to my own ship, but I'll be back here before you have the chance to reach the atmosphere" The Doctor shouted over the rumbling of the ship's engines. The entire ship lurched as it pulled itself free of the forest shrubbery, causing most of the shapeshifters to lose their balance, and the Doctor had teleported again before they regained it.

The Doctor waited until the TARDIS has finished the scan on Natalie before he searched for her home on the computers. Once he found the location of her studio, he danced around the control panel as he usually did, only stopping once he'd started to land to look at the results.

He grimaced, glancing from the results to Natalie, then back to the results. He started running around the console after that, looking for a sheet of paper.

"I know there's one around here some-aha!" he shouted, holding up the paper with a victorious grin. He grabbed the pen that was hidden among the controls (a rare thing, it contained an endless ink supply and it had been very hard to find) and set it to the paper, writing a quick note of explanation.

Once the note was finished, he slid it into Natalie's sketchbook. A few seconds later, he opened the sketchbook fully to look at the drawings. He looked up sharply as Natalie stirred, setting the sketchbook aside and reaching over the controls to land the TARDIS gently.

The Doctor carried the stirring Natalie into her studio, placing her gently on the small sofa sat in amongst the easels, pulling the blanket over her before he left. He was about to get the TARDIS onto the shapeshifter ship when he noticed Natalie's notebook and pencils still sat on the control panel, so he ran back into the studio to place them on the clearest workbench before turning on his heel and running back out, maneuvering between the easels without knocking any of them over.

Natalie awoke at the sound of an odd whirring noise, looking out of the window in time to see a blue police box dematerialising into thin air. She didn't know how she got back to the studio she called home, but she did know that the owner of that blue box had saved her life and she needed to talk to him.

She needed answers.

* * *

**Another mysterious chapter without a proper ending. Please don't kill me, but school is getting in the way of me finishing the next chapter, but I am working on it. I hope to have it finished sometime soon, but exams start next week, so no promises of a quick upload.**


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